May 24th, 2012
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London based artist Phil Toledano’s provocative “A New Kind Of Beauty” series examines the extreme lengths people go to alter, change, and morph their appearance through plastic surgery and other cosmetic alterations. Balancing on the verge of not looking human these individuals are pushing the limits of identity politics.

“I’m interested in what we define as beauty, when we choose to create it ourselves. Beauty has always been a currency, and now that we finally have the technological means to mint our own, what choices do we make? Is beauty informed by contemporary culture? By history? Or is it defined by the surgeon’s hand? Can we identify physical trends that vary from decade to decade, or is beauty timeless? When we re-make ourselves, are we revealing our true character, or are we stripping away our very identity? Perhaps we are creating a new kind of beauty. An amalgam of surgery, art, and popular culture? And if so, are the results the vanguard of human induced evolution?”

See Toledano’s work from June 2nd-July 7th at Kopeikin Gallery in Los Angeles.

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May 23rd, 2012
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Building on the metaphor of the “dome of heaven” as a visual container holding what we know, Carol Prusa  creates work consisting of acrylic hemispheres ranging from bowl-sized to six feet in diameter. Initiated in silverpoint drawing on the convex surface and completed with fiber optics, programmed LED’s and videos housed within, these domes are a visual embodiment – a download of sorts – of what it feels like to be alive while in conversation with contested cosmologies.

“My constructed domes are provocative symbols that invoke the idea of the universe and physical objects that allude to real-life structures. In my “canopies,” I explore a number of mathematical models that physicists developed to explain our universe. The mathematics of my expressed geometries offer a spiritual force that organizes structures from the microscopic to the political. Here, geometry isn’t simply abstract but creates a real world, sustained by its own logic.

To realize the startling phenomena that shape our everyday world, I incorporate digital projection and video technology. Like scientists and mathematicians who model emergent behavior, I too yearn to create a radical vision, one that takes into account the chaotic interactions that are central to formation of the universe.

As artists and scientists seek to explain our place, I join the most advanced daydreamers – those who imaginatively visualize a creative matrix and explore otherworldly possibilities – those who embrace indeterminacy and the fundamentally unstable boundaries between infinitesimal and immeasurable realms.”

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May 23rd, 2012
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London based photographer Julia Fullerton-Batten’s three part project centering around teenage girls tells the surreal story of the transition of teenage girls into womanhood. Each shot captures the lives and feelings of young girls as they change from relative innocence to a heightened awareness of their future adult life. For all of the images Batten chose to street cast girls for her models. Deliberately avoiding the use of professional models. Julia states that the slight awkwardness of her untrained models emphasizes the freshness and naturalness evident in her images.

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May 23rd, 2012
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Gorgeous figurative photography for both personal and commercial projects from Paris based Dimitri Daniloff that manipulates, chops, and morphs the human body into every which way.

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May 22nd, 2012
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Shady Trails, 2010
13.5 x 18 inches, Acrylic, colored pencil, ink, & graphite on paper $400
Sneaky Tree Girl, 2009
12 x 16.5 inches, Colored Pencil, graphite, & acrylic on paper, $250

Welcome to another release from Click To Collect, Beautiful/Decay’s campaign to help art lovers start their collection of original artists works at affordable prices! This week we bring you an amazing selection of drawings by LA based illustrator Lyndsey Lesh whose works mix quirky scenarios with Lesh’s masterfully drawn multimedia aesthetic. Based on fictional stories as well as real world observations these drawings open the door to Lesh’s creative world and beg you to join in on her humorous surreal adventures.  See all the available works by the talented Lyndsey Lesh and read more about our Click To Collect project after the jump!

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May 22nd, 2012
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Swiss artist Daniele Buetti’s light box constructions feature punctured holes that emit light from beneath the surface of the image creating a glowing highlight to the images of the distressed models and adding poetic text and musings to her provocative works.

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May 22nd, 2012
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I’m really enjoying the bit mapped illustrations and designs of Marcello Velho A.K.A Kingdom. His stacked illustrations look like unexplored levels of 1980′s video games that one would play while taking massive amounts of acid.

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May 22nd, 2012
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These works by Timothy Pakron may look like magnificently loose ink drawings but they are in fact photographs created using an unorthodox method of exposing film. Pakron’s process begins in the darkroom where he loosely hand paints on the photo developer onto the paper intentionally revealing specific desired areas of the face and neglecting others. The result is a magical image full of lucidity and unsettling strangeness that only hints at the reality of the photograph and challenges the viewer to question both the image and materials that they are confronted with.

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